It's June, It's June, Whatever Happened to May?

Cheryl Woolf Munns around 6 years of age

My sister, Cheryl, wanted a “sparkly” birthday on May 17th. I haven’t lived by her since she got married 40 years ago, but now that I’m down in Orange County we’re about an hour away from each other. So I invited her to get a substitute for her 2nd graders on Monday and join me at the beach. She said she wanted to wake up to a “sparkly” day and would come down the night before. As it turned out she came 2 nights before because another sister, Sandy, was in town for 24 hours. In the course of people coming and going, along with Holly (my former step-daughter) and Masa (her husband) and Masa’s cousin passing through town on their way to a funeral we had dinner and talking and more food and more talking. We made mosaic frames from left-over broken dishes collected after my parents’ house burned down. We walked along the beach in overcast weather--one wave completely knocked me off my feet, wiped me out, and drenched me from toe to head. Sandy tried to help me stay upright but she wasn’t strong enough to wrestle with Mother Nature and none of us could stop laughing. Chelsea said when see saw us walking in from the garage we all looked like monsters from the deep lagoon, hunched over, plodding, and scary.

Sawyer, me, Sandy, & Cheryl (the jacket wrapped around Cheryl because she, too, was drenched-except not her hair, how did that happen?) after Sandy loaded up her car. Yes, I know I'm the runt, always have been, always will be. And Cheryl and I still have a 6 in our age.

Sandy left Sat. around 3:30 and Cheryl and I went to the movies. Since we saw “Letters to Juliet” we had to eat Macaroni Grill take-out afterwards for dinner. Sunday, she was home for her church but came back again that night. On her “sparkly day” we went to the mall, ate lunch at PF Changs, and she went shopping for just a few things. 5 hours later she was well-supplied with wonderful new clothes, shoes, and a purse. After picking Chelsea up from work we had Cheryl give us a fashion show of all her new stuff. It was so much fun. I made her promise to give away everything in her closet that she hadn’t worn in the past year OR everything that she no longer needed now that she had a brand new wardrobe. I hope she did. I think we all sparkled celebrating her birthday.

Is there anything more enchanting than the following poem by William Wordsworth?

To My Sister

It is the first mild day of March:
Each minute sweeter than before
The redbreast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.

There is a blessing in the air,
Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field.

My sister! ('tis a wish of mine)
Now that our morning meal is done,
Make haste, your morning task resign;
Come forth and feel the sun.

Edward will come with you;--and, pray,
Put on with speed your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We'll give to idleness.

No joyless forms shall regulate
Our living calendar:
We from to-day, my Friend, will date
The opening of the year.

Love, now a universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth:
--It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more
Than years of toiling reason:
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.

Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey:
We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day.

And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,
We'll frame the measure of our souls:
They shall be tuned to love.

Then come, my Sister! come, I pray,
With speed put on your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We'll give to idleness.